SAN JOSE -- As mayoral hopeful Dave Cortese was giving his take on San Jose's hot-button employee pension issue during campaign cold calls last week, a skeptical voter replied: "Is it true you're backed by unions?"

It's a question Cortese has come to expect. The Santa Clara County supervisor is being fervently backed by the San Jose political machine known as organized labor -- and that's perhaps both his biggest strength and weakness.

An army of union members has been walking precincts and calling voters for Cortese. Union members donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign, granted key endorsements from groups like cops and firefighters, and they've heckled his competitors online and at campaign events. The unions say Cortese will restore trust with city workers, mainly police officers who have been abandoning the city amid a years-long crime wave that continues to plague San Jose.

Dave Cortese, a current member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, and a San Jose mayoral candidate, poses poses on the grounds of Overfelt High School, Tuesday morning, April 22, 2014, in San Jose, Calif. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
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Karl Mondon
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But critics led by Mayor Chuck Reed, the current majority of the City Council and the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce fear Cortese will wipe out years of fiscal restraint and cuts by going on a taxpayer spending spree. They point to his plans to roll back key parts of voter-approved pension cuts.

Back on the phone call with the voter, Cortese launched immediately into what has become a bit of a slogan during his campaign, saying: "I'm not afraid to say no," even to groups that help him get elected. He cited his business background, past support from moderate groups, efforts to balance the county budget and votes against labor-friendly contracts, and vowed not to be a union "pushover."

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"I've been around long enough to know that's the obvious question," he said in an interview afterward. "If someone endorses you, are they going to be expecting some favoritism?"

Cortese presents a clear choice for voters in San Jose. As the only outsider in the race -- the other four challengers are all Reed allies on the City Council -- he will be the preferred candidate for many people who do not like what is going on at City Hall and want a change.

On the two biggest issues in the campaign -- restoring the depleted police force amid rising crime rates, and whether to keep fighting in court for pension cuts that cops and other city workers oppose -- Cortese strongly differs from his rivals.

He is the only candidate who wants to settle lawsuits -- likely heading toward an appeals court -- that unions lodged against the city after voters approved the pension reform measure known as Measure B in 2012. Cortese would have the city abandon parts of the initiative that a lower-court judge struck down, such as making current cops and other city workers pay more toward their pensions. He also wants to increase pension benefits for new hires to match those in the state plan and abandon disability retirement limits.

Those moves could prevent the city from winning hundreds of millions of dollars in savings on appeal, and would erase a key chunk of the pension reform legacy left by Reed and his council allies, most of whom are also being termed out.

The pension issue is sensitive for Cortese. He sat not only as a councilman but as a pension trustee during years when the city boosted retirement benefits while underestimating costs that since have soared, devouring funds for services. San Jose's budget remains fragile as pension costs keep rising despite limited retirement reforms now in place.

Cortese is vague about how the city, without full pension reform, could afford to improve services that were cut in recent years to cover growing retirement costs. He calls a new tax premature and says he'd work with the unions to find savings elsewhere, prioritizing extra revenues from the economic upswing to pay for cops and pensions. He maintains that ending the heated Measure B legal dispute is the only way cops will come back to work for San Jose so the city can try to regain its lost title as the safest big city in the country.

"I don't think anyone who is elected mayor could sustain that lawsuit without completely destroying the city," Cortese said in a direct rebuke to Reed.

"It's very clear from the onset that he's labor's candidate," said chamber CEO Matt Mahood, whose influential political action committee has given funds to every candidate except Cortese.

Cortese says he has known he wanted to get into public office since he was a kid -- even before his dad, Dom, got into politics and eventually rose to the rank of state assemblyman. He's not afraid to invoke his family's history to connect with voters.

He has the most political experience of any candidate, and is the only one to have run for mayor before -- in 2006, the last time a seat was open. He finished fourth among five major candidates in the primary won by Reed, who named him his first vice mayor. But the two differed on the council over development plans for Cortese's Evergreen district, and later over pension reform.

Cortese can be very persuasive and even charming in one-on-one situations, and knows it: He leaves his personal cellphone number for voters. But he often struggles in group situations, which may be an issue for his campaign. Some attendees of this campaign season's debates say he often looks like he doesn't want to be there; and his long-winded explanations rarely fit into sound bites.

To combat this, Cortese often calls voters after debates to tell them he didn't think he got his point across as well as he'd like, and asks for a few minutes to talk personally, where he can shine. His wife and campaign adviser, Pattie, tells him to smile more.

Pattie Cortese, citing her husband's background as a lawyer and certified mediator, calls him a "work-it-out kind of guy" who's well-equipped to ease City Hall infighting.

Cortese sees himself as being in the same mold of Gov. Jerry Brown, who in recent years got elected and passed his signature tax measure with the financial support of unions despite being a fiscal moderate.

But back on another call with a voter, he was again talking about the issue of retaining cops: "Chuck Reed's trying to figure that out, and if he doesn't, I will."

Candidate profiles

Each day this week, the Mercury News is profiling the five major candidates competing in the June 3 primary to replace termed-out Mayor Chuck Reed. The top two vote-getters will move on to compete in the November election. Today: Dave Cortese. Tuesday: Rose Herrera. Wednesday: Sam Liccardo. Thursday: Madison Nguyen. Friday: Pierluigi Oliverio.

Dave Cortese

Current job: Santa Clara County supervisor since 2008Prior political experience: City Council 2001-2008; East Side Union High School Board 1992-2001Age: 57Political party: DemocratFamily: Married with four childrenFundraising rank among five major candidates: About tied for secondThree endorsements he highlights: Santa Clara County Democratic Party, the five most recent ex-San Jose police chiefs, county Supervisor Ken YeagerFun fact: His birthday is June 3 -- the day of the primary